


Nostos

by hippocrates460



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Falling In Love, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Liberal abuse of metaphors, M/M, Mystrade is Magic, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23952784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460
Summary: ὢ πόποι ἦ ῥά τις ἐστὶ καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον(and so, oh wonder, there is, even in the house of Hades, some soul and image)-	Homer (The Odyssey)‘Why, yes,’ he said, ‘I know of a cure for everything: salt water.’‘Salt water?’ I asked him.‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.’-	Karen Blixen (The Deluge at Norderney)Nostos, the oft used theme in Ancient Greek literature which includes an epic hero returning home, doesn't involve the sea, or a shipwreck, or even fang-toothed sirens for Greg. Plenty of frustration and heartache, however. And who could help?
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 37
Kudos: 90
Collections: Mystrade Is Magic





	Nostos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [benditlikerackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benditlikerackham/gifts), [randomscientist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomscientist/gifts).



> For Jo and Ship, who cheered and encouraged and also did like >50% of the work. This work would have no art, no title, and no soul without you. Here's my golden apple of discord, for the καλᾰ́.  
> Thank you Ata for your help with Greek, you're a star <3

  
  
“… and that’s why I need your help.” Greg breathes out all the way. He looks around to see if there’s anywhere for him to sit.

“Here,” says Mycroft. He holds him by the elbow and guides him to the chair in the corner of his office. “I hope you don’t mind if I’d like to ask you some questions?”

“Not at all,” Greg says, sighing heavily as he leans back in the chair. His legs are weak and shaky with exhaustion. He feels nauseous.

“How did you first know this was not your reality – as you put it?”

Greg has to think on it. It had taken him almost a full day the first time, to stop ignoring all the little signs. Sometimes it’s glaringly obvious that the tunnels have taken him somewhere he doesn’t belong, other times he has to look harder, peel back the edge of what doesn’t work, and see how far it goes. What had it been this time? “The sky, I think,” he says. “It’s the wrong colour.”

“Fascinating,” says Mycroft.

“You believe me?” Greg asks, and Mycroft smiles at him, open and affectionate. “Just like that?”

“Of course I do. I know my husband, and you are not him.”

“Shit,” Greg sits up. He’s managed to avoid himself so far, certain that it would be a mess of epic proportions to try and explain _that_. He knows he’s different in these other realities, from the way people respond to him, and he doesn’t care to find out how different. “Will I – ”

“Not for a few hours yet,” Mycroft promises, and Greg leans back again. “Is that – is that a common factor? Is that why you came straight here?”

“No,” Greg says, he is very curious but he also feels like he shouldn’t waste time. Who knows how time is passing, what is happening, back in his own London. “No – it isn’t. But we work together, for your brother, sometimes. And I trust you. And you trust me, usually.”

Mycroft just looks at him, all of him softer than Greg remembers him being. At home. Soft clothes, soft hair, a neat soft-looking beard. Even the chair on the other side of his desk is more comfortable in this London. He thinks about adding that Sherlock never helps him in his reality without excessive begging and he’s not ready to find out how it could be worse, but Mycroft is already starting to ask more questions. As if it’s natural for Greg to come to him.

“So what prompted you to enter the tunnels in the first place? Had they always existed? What features do you remember of the tunnels you were in before, and how have the tunnels been different since?”

“The tunnels stay the same,” Greg says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. Mycroft picks the little notebook he always carries around up from the table. “Some other – another you suggested I mark the doors I’ve taken before, but that didn’t work. I can’t bring anything with me from – from reality to reality.”

“This must be very hard for you,” Mycroft says, and it’s that comment that makes Greg’s eyes sting. He’s been through this so many times, he’s not rested since he started his day in his own London, ages ago. Something in him is unwilling to risk not being able to ever go home. “Here,” Mycroft says, voice soft. “Let me – oh I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

“No, no,” Greg protests, but then he hears a kettle being filled and that’s just what he wants actually. “Thank you – I don’t. You’re so different from – you’re so different here.” He takes a moment to breathe through it, and Mycroft lets him, fussing with the tea with his back towards Greg.

“You know,” Mycroft says when he looks at the mug he’s just poured. “I’m just thinking what if this is some sort of faerie thing? Would it be unwise to – ”

Greg had thought of that. “I ate the first time,” he says. “Before I realised. It’s moot.”

“Here you go then,” Mycroft has a soft concerned frown on his face, handing the tea over. It’s perfect. Clearly this reality’s Greg has excellent taste on the whole.

“I’m very tired,” Greg says, eventually. Mycroft had gone back to work as he drank his tea and then ate some of Mycroft’s top-drawer biscuits. “And I’m worried this isn’t real.”

“That you might be hallucinating?” Mycroft asks, folding his hands neatly in front of him.

“Or in a coma, perhaps.” They look at each other for a beat.

“What have you _not_ tried,” Mycroft says then, “what is too mad, too absurd to contemplate. What could you still try?”

“Dying,” says Greg. He’s considered it. “Meeting myself.”

Mycroft nods, tapping his pen as he thinks. It’s a new habit, something Greg hasn’t seen him do before. Or maybe Mycroft has never let him see? “What happened right before?”

“I was chasing Sherlock, I don’t know how he is here but he’s a tit where I’m from,” he resettles in his chair and continues. “And then we went into the catacombs, where I’ve been before but then I couldn’t find him and – ” He stops himself. Mycroft looks at him. “Will you come with me?”

Mycroft doesn’t hesitate a second, just stands up to grab his coat. He rummages around in his pockets and finds two mismatching gloves. “Here,” he says, handing one to Greg. Greg stares at it, not sure what to do with a fleece glove that’s clearly been in the wash a few times over, until Mycroft hands him a second one.

“You keep a spare pair of gloves,” he says.

“Yes,” Mycroft tells him, and there’s something in his eyes. “You always forget yours.”

On the way to the catacombs Greg tries to explain to Mycroft what he just remembered and he keeps getting distracted by the way his hands aren’t cold. Mycroft doesn’t touch him, but he holds doors open, and falls into step comfortably. Tunnels.

“I’ve been using my phone,” Greg says. For the third time. “To find my way.”

“And did you do that the first time too?” Mycroft asks, patient as he’s never been before.

“No, I – dammit.” He stops and looks at Mycroft. They’re almost there. “I followed Sherlock. He had a light, and I followed him until I couldn’t keep up.” Mycroft looks back at him. “Look I have no right to ask,” Greg starts, and Mycroft shakes no. “What?”

“You need to go home,” he says. “To where you’re loved, and perhaps missed.” He says it so steadily, like nothing could be more obvious.

“I don’t – I couldn’t.... thank you.” He swallows, looks at the stupid church he’d be able to find blindly by now, and leads the way to the doors.

“I’ll have to go first right?” Mycroft asks, thumbing away on his phone. Greg hums his yes, and waits for Mycroft to look back up. “He knows I love him,” says Mycroft.

Greg nods. Looks at the gloves again. “This is the colour of the sky,” he says, “when it’s cloudy. A bit brighter when not, darker, perhaps.”

“Like your eyes,” says Mycroft and Greg looks up at him.

“Not... not even a little bit?” And then he notices that Mycroft is smiling, a little sideways smirk. The bastard. Greg laughs along with him until he remembers something. “And how do you know that I am loved?” They’re far enough inside that the light is too low to see him properly, but the way Mycroft breathes out a bit sharply gives him away. Amused still, and a bit surprised.

“Your wallet,” he says. “Obviously.”

Obviously indeed. It’s in Greg’s back pocket and much as he knows what it looks like he feels the urge to take it out. He’s had it a while, but the leather has held up well. He’d suspected that it has a tracker, of course he had. “Hope that’s not what I lose next,” he says, instead.

“It’d be fitting,” Mycroft seems to be saying it to himself. “Charon’s obol. Greg – at the risk of.... exposing myself. Or not _me_ , perhaps. I – I used to have his spare suits picked up from his office and cleaned. His shoes taken to get resoled and fitted with new laces.”

“I – God Mycroft,” Greg says. His heart pounds with love for what this Mycroft has with his very own Greg. “I don’t think that’s ever happened to me. He barely knows me?” They’re looking at each other, even if all he can see of Mycroft’s face is what the reflection off the light from his phones on the stones beneath them lets him see. “But – yeah. Point taken. Lead the way. Let’s get me home.”

Mycroft nods at him, and turns away. At first he’s easy to follow, and Greg wonders why until he realises that this might not work if he’s _trying_ to lose track of Mycroft. So he lets Mycroft lead. Mycroft speeds up, takes sharp turns, even seems to be following a track at some point. Greg starts jogging to keep up, and soon they’re both running. It’s like Mycroft has forgotten he is there at all. He wants to shout for him to stop and focuses on keeping up instead, pushing on, trying not to bump his head where the ceiling is low, or trip over the loose rocks and pebbles strewn around.

When the get to the tunnel with uneven abandoned train tracks, the distance between them gets larger and larger, and then before he knows it he doesn’t see Mycroft anymore. “Fuck,” he pants, and he stretches his legs for one last sprint, not ready to be alone in here just yet. But Mycroft is gone.

The last time he was here, alone and in the dark, he’d taken out his phone and used its light to get him through. He tries to keep faith in his ability to eventually find a way out, focuses on the way the walking is heavy, like he is walking uphill, and decides over and over again not to look over his shoulder. Not to turn back. He’s made up his mind. And he will make it out.

When he starts to see light, and be able to make out shapes, he wonders if he’s hallucinating and keeps going. But when he finds his wallet, lying in the middle of the narrow hallway he’s been walking through, relief stops his breath. Ragged and chalky, he pants as he picks it up without losing his pace. There is his phone. Next a button he’s been meaning to sew back on. When he finds his granola bar he doesn’t put it back into his pocket, he holds it in his fist. There is the door, there is the air. Here is light.

He is still blinking at the sky, trying to catch his breath, when a car stops in front of him. The wheels were loud on the cobblestones but Greg doesn’t look until he hears the doors unlock. Mycroft steps out. He holds the door open for Greg, and Greg climbs in. When Mycroft sits down next to him he looks at him, tries to think of words or meanings to try and somehow explain what he has just gone through, he realises he’s still clutching the granola bar.

“It doesn’t alert me when somebody disappears off of the map entirely,” Mycroft says, jumping into a conversation Greg wasn’t aware they were having as he is wont to do when he is nervous, “since we had not factored such a possibility in upon programming. An oversight that I am inclined to consider forgivable.”

“Did you get a notification when I returned?” Greg asks, when he’s had a second to think. Mycroft looks back at him.

“No.” Unsurprising, but endearing all the same.

“Has this happened before?” Greg asks, hoping he’s not about to peel back an entirely layer of government secrets he was quite content living without.

“Not as far as I know,” Mycroft says. “I should like to hear the whole story as soon as you would be willing to share it.”

“What of the – the case?” Greg tries to remember where they’d been, where he’d left off with Sherlock.

“It was solved yesterday,” Mycroft tells him.

Greg sits up. Shit. “How long was I gone for?” 

“About four hours,” Mycroft checks his watch and doesn’t correct himself. Not that Greg thought he’d get it wrong. “Sherlock has been told of this, but insisted on following his own leads regardless.”

“Stubborn sod,” Greg complains, leaning back into the leather seat. He needs food, and a good night’s sleep, and a shower.

“I could go,” Mycroft offers, and again Greg struggles to trace the steps of the conversation that didn’t happen out loud.

“But you were worried,” Greg says, hoping Mycroft’s face will soften and let him see, like it had done. Sometimes. It doesn’t now. “And you’d prefer to stay and make sure I don’t disappear again.”

Mycroft doesn’t answer, but he follows Greg in to his flat, and hovers awkwardly while Greg gets them some food and then goes off to shower and sleep. When Greg wakes up hours later, somehow even more tired and now also dehydrated, he finds Mycroft asleep on the sofa. “It’s two in the morning,” he says, as gentle as he can manage, when he wakes Mycroft up with some tea. “You needn’t stay, and if you do you needn’t stay in your suit on the sofa.”

Mycroft lets himself get coaxed out of his jacket and waistcoat, and after some further deliberation his tie too. He even allows Greg to fetch him a proper sweater, cable knit and butter soft. Greg smiles at it and Mycroft frowns into his tea. “It’ll be returned clean and proper, not to worry.”

“No, that’s – ” Greg makes a face when he remembers just how much he’s been enjoying the way his scarf smells now, the way the scent has lingered.

Mycroft is still frowning, his eyes flitting back and forth between Greg, who is sitting on the coffee table to be close but not too close. He picks a hair off of his arm. Too long to be one of Greg’s, not grey enough, too. “Apologies – ” Mycroft swallows, “I am sorry for shedding like a shaggy ca-canine all over your – ”

 _Canine_ , Greg smiles with it. “All forgiven,” he promises. “And don’t bother washing it, I don’t mind at all.” Mycroft clears his throat like he might say something else but then doesn’t. So Greg hands him his notebook and pen. “I chased Sherlock into the catacombs. And when I came out again, things were different. I ignored it but by the end of the day I got to my flat and it wasn’t my flat. So I went back to the catacombs.”

“How many different realities did you see?” Mycroft asks, as he takes notes. Greg leans back to think about it. More than five. More than ten? “And what was it that got you back, in the end?”

At that Greg sits up again. “You,” he tells Mycroft. And he talks about other Mycroft, the one that is married to other Greg, hoping he doesn’t give it all away, trying to stick to the facts like he wishes eyewitnesses would. He knows he can’t fool Mycroft, and yet his pride doesn’t allow him not to try.

“So it took your phone?” Mycroft interrupts him to ask. “What else did it take? What was the first thing that you noticed missing?”

“My granola bar,” says Greg. “But before then... I didn’t miss it but I had one of those little towels? That they give you at restaurants sometimes. To clean your hands after eating.” Mycroft nods as he writes, like this makes sense. “What?”

“Choai,” he says, “then enagismata. It does not make sense, and with your permission I fully intend to... sweep this under the rug so to say. But I should like to know.”

Greg breathes out, realises he had been holding on to fear, that Mycroft wouldn’t believe him, that he’d be writing a book about this and called the new Lewis Carroll except for the fact he can’t write his way out of a cardboard box. _What vivid imagination you have_ , he can hear it practically. But Mycroft just wants to know. “That’s alright,” he promises.

“Is there anything you feared to lose but didn’t? What is the last thing you lost?”

“My scarf,” Greg says, thinking of how exposed he’d have felt below the ground in the wet dripping damp of the catacombs. “And my wallet.”

“Fitting,” says Mycroft. “Charon’s obol.”

“Yeah you said that,” Greg looks at him, and they both smile when Mycroft looks back. Of course he hadn’t. “What’s it mean?”

“The price of crossing the river Styx is a coin,” Mycroft tells him. And suddenly Greg itches to check inside his wallet, all his clothes too, to see if there’s something he misses still, if there’s anything he left behind. Mycroft looks at him as Greg feels his whole body fill with angry buzzing and then nods sharply. “Let’s,” he urges. So they do.

The sky is changing colour by the time Mycroft and Greg lean out of his kitchen window together, sharing Mycroft’s last cigarette. “Thought you’d quit,” Greg says, wanting to think of something else than those damn tunnels for a little while.

“I have,” Mycroft says, before letting out the breath he was holding, smoke billowing in the early morning air. “I’ve had this one a while.” He hands it back and Greg looks at it properly, it does look a bit worse for wear, especially considering it’s been inside a cigarette case this whole time. Rothmans. Greg’s kind.

It’s a blessing to inhale, to have it taste just right, burn just how it should. Greg feels the weight of Mycroft next to him, how warm he is, and stares out across the neglected greenery that breaks through the cracks in the pavement with a zest for life rarely seen outside of dandelions. “What’s a cooey?” Greg asks, when he finally gathers the courage for it.

“A libation, some offering of perfume, milk, or honey. Choai. Part of the funerary rites in Ancient Greece. It was offered along with food, to be burned for the gods, and a lock of hair from a loved one. Then the funeral pyre was lit.”

“Why hair?” Greg wonders out loud, as the smell of the filter burning prompts him to press the cigarette down against the window sill, one black smudge among many. They don’t move.

“I assume it would be a way to provide company, on the final journey,” Mycroft says. “I don’t know much else about mourning, I’ll admit. I do know they used to clean the house of the diseased after the funeral, with seawater and hyssop.”

“Hyssop?” Greg asks, as a powerful longing to be by the sea wells up in him. Rushes in his ears.

Mycroft points at the corner of the courtyard, three floors beneath them. “Like that, the one with purple flowers.”

Greg turns to him, his whole chest heavy with the way he feels like he might be drowning. “Mycroft,” he manages, “did I go to Hades?”

“I do not know where you went,” Mycroft tells him, his eyes dark and serious. “But I am very grateful that you have returned.”

That helps, a bit, and Greg nods. Perhaps he just needs to sleep it off further. It’s been a very strange night, following a far stranger day.

When he holds the door open, and Mycroft, back in his jacket but still wearing Greg’s sweater, frowns at him in concern, words wash away with the sorrow that sloshes around in Greg. “What happens next?” he murmurs, and Mycroft’s face is real. That’s his Mycroft. And he is right here.

“You sleep,” Mycroft says. “And I return to my duties.”

“With us?” Greg specifies. “I cannot – I won’t,” he swallows and suddenly the words start flowing. “You can’t tell me I – I won’t know how to come back from this, Mycroft, I don’t mean to make this your responsibility but how can I? How should I? What happens next?”

Mycroft blinks. “I could come back for dinner,” he offers.

It should be nice. That should feel good. “And then _what_ ,” Greg chokes out, one hand so tight on the doorpost that it hurts. “We _date_?” He can’t be tentative he has no desire to flirt or feel each other out or talk about work and traffic and the mundanities that make up life. Not like this. He is absolutely uninterested in having something with less intimacy than waking up together every single day, and seeing how Mycroft’s body changes with days and months and years and having stories with every wrinkle, dip, freckle, and knowing what he tastes like. “I want to be _married_ ,” he says, and there it comes, his cheeks are wet, his nose tickles when a drop falls from it, as he sits on the floor, head between his knees, Mycroft wrapped around him like an exoskeleton.

It slows down, eventually, and Mycroft washes his face, and tucks him into bed. But only when they are both lying down together and Greg has laughed and apologised, joked about how he didn’t mean to make it sound like such a hardship to be dating Mycroft. And they’ve kissed. And he doesn’t know where he went but he does know he is back, and he is alive.

Greg falls asleep in a room that is alight with the bright determined sun. He dreams of tying one end of his scarf to a lamppost, and holding it in his hands as he walked through the tunnels. He dreams the scarf stretches endlessly, becomes infinitely long. Stays warm and soft and just this side of copper-coloured no matter how far he goes.


End file.
